Friday, May 29, 2020

Trump space speech in Florida likely to test apolitical nature of NASA
U.S. Space Force debuts new recruiting ad entitled ‘Make History’
What does Joe Biden believe about NASA, space exploration and commercial space?
Third European Service Module for Artemis Mission to Land Astronauts on the Moon
NASA chief "all in" for Tom Cruise to film on space station
Gabriella's Holy War
Gabriella's War: A Vampire Gabriella Novel
In Planet Formation, It's Location, Location, Location
US court grants permission to recover Marconi telegraph from Titanic wreckage
Scientists create virus that has potential to fight cancer

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

What It’s Like to Sweat the Launch of a New Spaceship
Doug Liman To Direct Tom Cruise In Outer Space-Shot Movie Collaboration With Elon Musk & NASA
J.K. Rowling Begins Publishing ‘The Ickabog,’ for Children in Lockdown
What does Joe Biden believe about NASA, space exploration and commercial space?

Update: It looks like Charles Bolden and Bill Nelson are advising Team Biden on space policy.

Early tests of vaccine for COVID-19 pass peer review, look promising
New material could be used to make a liquid metal robot
Growing Anomalies at the Large Hadron Collider Raise Hopes
SpaceX to launch astronauts — and a new era of private human spaceflight
Media’s Unpunished Lies Hurt The Nation Far Worse Than Trump’s Indefensible Tweets

Monday, May 25, 2020

What does Joe Biden believe about NASA, space exploration and commercial space?

The easy way to answer this question is that Biden’s space policy could be Obamaspace 2.0. The Artemis return to the moon program would be cancelled, or at least delayed for so long as to be rendered meaningless. The Space Force would be disbanded and folded back into the Air Force. Many Democrats, especially those who hope to serve in a Biden administration, tend to be against anything that President Trump proposes just because Trump proposed it.

Rocketman (and woman): Elon and Gwynne, the pair who made SpaceX
Elon Musk’s First Astronaut Launch Is One Giant Leap For Space Capitalism
On the Moon, astronaut pee will be a hot commodity
Space Development Agency scouting the market for launch services
U.S. Troops Are Vulnerable. Israel Technologies Can Help
THERMOPYLAE, ALASKA: A REMARKABLY SMALL PART OF THE US MILITARY RESPONSIBLE FOR NUCLEAR MISSILE DEFENSE
Rethinking the role of blood pressure drugs in COVID-19

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Energy Limits to the Gross Domestic Product on Earth

Once carbon emission neutrality and other sustainability goals have been achieved, a widespread assumption is that economic growth at current rates can be sustained beyond the 21st century. However, even if we achieve these goals, this article shows that the overall size of Earth's global economy is facing an upper limit purely due to energy and thermodynamic factors. For that, we break down global warming into two components: the greenhouse gas effect and heat dissipation from energy consumption related to economic activities. For the temperature increase due to greenhouse gas emissions, we take 2 °C and 5 °C as our lower and upper bounds. For the warming effect of heat dissipation related to energy consumption, we use a simplified model for global warming and an extrapolation of the historical correlation between global gross domestic product (GDP) and primary energy production. Combining the two effects, we set the acceptable global warming temperature limit to 7 °C above pre-industrial levels. We develop four scenarios, based on the viability of large-scale deployment of carbon-neutral energy sources. Our results indicate that for a 2% annual GDP growth, the upper limit will be reached at best within a few centuries, even in favorable scenarios where new energy sources such as fusion power are deployed on a massive scale. We conclude that unless GDP can be largely decoupled from energy consumption, thermodynamics will put a hard cap on the size of Earth's economy. Further economic growth would necessarily require expanding economic activities into space.

How the latest X-37B mission may change the world
Explaining China’s space ambitions and goals through the lens of strategic culture
When Washington went to the Moon: An interview with Glen Wilson
NASA will likely add a rendezvous test to the first piloted Orion space mission
The science of prayer
Can electrical impulses in the brain explain the stuff that dreams are made on? What a new consciousness-detector reveals

Sunday, May 17, 2020

How the latest X-37B mission may change the world

The X-37B, the secretive uncrewed reusable space plane, has lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The spacecraft is loaded with a variety of experiments, some from NASA, some from the United States Space Force. One experiment, testing the microwave transmission of solar energy captured from space, has the potential to change the world.

The latest Chinese space launch presents both a problem and an opportunity for NASA
Private firms to get access to ISRO’s facilities, space exploration opportunities
SpaceX to launch first Starlink satellites testing 'VisorSat' to block sun
How NASA is building a new breed of spacesuit for the first expedition to Mars
A temple that predates Stonehenge reveals architectural planning may be older than we think
CDC Official Has Solution for Vaccine Refusers: ‘We’ll Just Get Rid of All Whites in the United States’

Monday, May 11, 2020

A 2024 Moon landing may sound crazy, but NASA is giving its best shot
The latest Chinese space launch presents both a problem and an opportunity for NASA

China has successfully launched its Long March 5B rocket, putting a prototype of its new crewed spacecraft into low Earth orbit. As Ars Technica suggests, China has advanced its space effort considerably, allowing it to perform a variety of space missions that promise to match and even exceed anything that NASA has achieved. The launch presents a problem for the space agency but also an opportunity.

Building a Moon Base Using Astronaut Waste in Lunar Concrete
Here's how NASA engineers piloting the Mars rover are managing their work-life balance during lockdown
Space Force to get deeper insight into inner workings of SpaceX commercial launches
Can We Extract Energy From Gravitational Waves?
WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE MOON HABITAT MADE OF?

Thursday, May 07, 2020

Democrats are struggling to thwart NASA’s commercial return to the moon

Recently, NASA selected three commercial partners to build lunar landers that will deliver the “first woman and the next man” to the lunar surface by 2024. The companies are Dynetics, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The contracts are designed along the lines of the Commercial Crew program, in which the companies will own the lunar landers, and NASA would fly on them to the moon’s surface as a customer.

Bridenstine ties international cooperation on Artemis to norms of behavior in space
NASA planning to launch an integrated Lunar Gateway in 2023
Astronomers find closest black hole to Earth, hints of more
What Will It Be Like When We Reach The End Of The Universe?
The US should follow Sweden's approach to combating COVID-19

Saturday, May 02, 2020

NASA identifies risks in SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander proposal
Beacon of hope? NASA sees inspiration parallels between Apollo and Artemis moonshots
NASA will pay a staggering $146 million for each SLS rocket engine
30 Years Later, This Big Boy Fusion Reactor Is Almost Ready to Turn On
Nanotechnology to Treat Alzheimer’s Disease
Should You Get an Antibody Test?
Michael Moore’s green energy takedown—worse than Netflix’s Goop series?
NASA is counting on a lot of unproven rockets for its Artemis plan
Robots Will Replace Soldiers In Combat, Says Russia